May 17, 2007 - SEO / PPC    6 Comments

Breaking Merchants PPC Rules

A few days ago, I received a phonecall from Affilinet as one of my PPC campaigns was appearing on a word that was not permitted as per the merchants T&C’s. I was adamant that I didn’t have that keyword, whether it be exact, broad or phrase, in my keyword list and so was confused as to how it was showing up.

naughtyxs7 Breaking Merchants PPC RulesI dropped Google a support email asking for them to clarify why this was happening, after all, I am as law abiding as is possible for a scouser ;) It turns out that the Google Algo’s have, on their own, determined that my advert is relevant to specific keywords that I have not listed, and therefore has ‘helped’ me by showing it for such said words. Now this could be a great feature, but when it means that you are unknowingly bidding on keywords that are not permitted, then it can cause some trouble with the merchant and network.

After a bit of to’ing and fro’ing between myself and Google, below is the official response I have received. I’ve changed the keyword and company involved, but lets say for arguments sake it was SPIDERMAN.

Hello Chris,

Thank you for your reply.

Following on from your previous email, yes, although you are not actually bidding for the keyword ‘SPIDERMAN’, after evaluating your website and ad text, it is probable that our system has assessed that ‘SPIDERMAN’ is relevant to your ad, and therefore was triggering it.

Since you have added ‘SPIDERMAN’ as a negative keyword, it is no longer triggering your ad on its own. However, if you want to prevent it ever triggering your ad as part of a search query, for example, ‘SPIDERMAN GAME’, ‘SPIDERMAN OUTFIT’ etc, I would advise you to make all of your keywords exact match keywords, and to keep ‘SPIDERMAN’ as a negative keyword. This means that when people search on a combination of one of your keywords and SPIDERMAN, for example, ‘SPIDERMAN BEDDING’, your ad will not be triggered.

Sincerely,

Emma D.
The Google AdWords UK and Ireland team

I think maybe they should introduce this as a feature that you can either enable to disable on a campaign level. The last thing I want is for Google to ‘help’ me, which in actual effect results in a breakdown in trust between myself and the network/merchant.

  • http://www.mooseontheloose.co.uk Moose

    That sounds familiar, albeit it hasnt happened for a while we have had this same problem of several occasions, it’s a kind of contextual matching. The networks, didn’t believe me and one in particular was quite malicious, so I had to get communication from Google on this to confirm we were not brand bidding, which they obliged to do, however even one of the networks was still dismissive of it. I think this is happening more than people realise and just complicates the picture of who & who isn’t brand name bidding, I have explained to several account managers in the past, but they just don’t “get it”, and perceive everything as balck or white.

  • Pistol

    Not believing the law abiding scouser bit!

  • http://www.webpublishingblog.com Andrew Johnson

    As far as I am concerned this is fraud. If you go to the grocery store and put milk and eggs in your shopping cart, and upon check out they slip in a bag of cookies and charge you for it — you just got scammed. If Google is doing this they need a disclaimer that exact match isn’t really exact at all.

    This is a big deal because ad buyers can get in trouble, and in some cases lose significant amounts of money. Yahoo is even shadier, there are numerous cases of them modifying the ad copy of purchased inventory at no notice (it happened to me.)

    Ad buyers don’t need their hands held. Any changes or modifications to an order must require a clients approval.

  • http://www.Justairfare.com David

    Wow..i was not aware of this, i recently started an affiliate program for my travel sites http://www.justairfare.com and http://www.ticketbarato.com and came across this issue. I had 2 affiliates that seem to be using the brand which i was not ok with since i had stated this was not allowed. BUT this gives me a different view to think that ad system is doing it. Thanks for the article….it will not chnage my rules but at least i know to not accuse the affiliates right off for breaking the rules.

  • http://www.webaffiliate.co.uk Chris Frost

    David

    It is definately worth just checking with the affiliates in question. It’s more likely they know PPC better than a network and therefore will be able to educate or explain to you why their advert is showing. It may also be the case that they are bidding on a brand.

    Sadly, the networks don’t always have the skills or understanding and often go in very heavy handed. This not only P’s affiliates off with a network, but it can sometimes result in an affiliate dropping that merchant, and advertising a competitor in its place. Not good for you as a merchant.

    Sadly this is happening very often, and happened once again to me only last week;
    http://www.webaffiliate.co.uk/blog/seo/microsoft/affilinet-accuses-again.html

  • http://www.epurplemedia.co.uk/ Julie – Affiliate Marketing Expert

    well, unfortunately it’s true but we can hire trusted name in this industry to overcome from this problem.